“If you catch the plague, child,” added Saara, “we cannot help you.”
Gaspare balled fists at his sides and advanced upon Damiano. “Stop trying to get rid of me.”
The wolfhound, sensing tension in his little pack, weaseled in between the two humans and, with a wiggle and lean, knocked Gaspare against the wall. The boy cursed but did not dare a kick at Couchicou’s slablike side.
Damiano turned away. “To get rid of you? I have given that up, Gaspare,” he muttered to himself. “Two nations, endless mountains and a plague town were not sufficient for the purpose.”
They needed neither directions nor second sight to tell them when they approached the palace infirmary. The stench of sickness informed them of their approach, along with the sight of piles of straw along both sides of the corridor wall, on which the afflicted were placed in long rows.
Damiano had seen plague victims before, and told himself that he ought to be hardened to the sight. Saying that did no good, however, for on the green faces before him, and in their suppurating lesions, pain had been translated into pure ugliness, and death into an unconquerable despair.
“And these are all men dedicated to Christ’s service,” he whispered, dropping his arm from Saara’s shoulders. “It does not seem… allowable.”
Glassy gray eyes met his, shining from a face made hideous by swelling. They asked no questions, these eyes.
“He can see me,” whispered Damiano. “Despite the spell, he can see me. Is that because he is dying?”
Saara took her lover gently by the arm. “Come, Dami.”
Gaspare stared straight ahead. His pinched face had gone slick with fear-sweat. Couchicou, too, walked stiffly, pressing his side against that of the boy, and his rough fur bristled along his back.
Moving quietly among the dying were women in white, whose eyes were weary beyond expression, and whose lips moved constantly, without sound. Benedictines, these were. Damiano watched the nuns and wondered, remembering a girl with flaxen hair who once sat in a high loggia, doing needlework under the white north light of the Alps. Carla Denezzi, postulant of the order of Saint Clare: if fortune did not take him again to the high mountains of his birth, he would never see her again.
It might be she was dead now.
Soon they passed the infirmary hall itself, where the stench was overpowering, and the dead lay in stacks covered by sheets. They came to a turn in the corridor where there were no more piles of hay and no more gentle Benedictines, but far off along a tunnellike corridor could be escried a pair of Papal guards, complete with sword and halberd, like those that stood by the main gate of the enclosure. But these pikes did not point to heaven in parallel. They swayed through the torchlight like fir trees in the wind, for the guards were talking animatedly to another, less impressive figure that pointed repeatedly into the darkness along the corridor.
“What?” whispered Gaspare in Damiano’s ear. “What’s that happening ahead?”
The witch’s ears rather than his eyes gave him that information. For a moment his face went blank with surprise and he grabbed each of his companions by the arm. “By all saints: it’s the Dutchman. How did he get here before us?”
Saara said nothing. In the midst of her spell-song, it is doubtful she even understood what Damiano was saying, nor why he pulled them to a rough stop in the middle of an empty corridor. Couchicou prodded them all with his nose, impatient to be going, and then he scented a person he had encountered before now in dubious circumstances. A person of no importance, a person he did not like. The war-dog rumbled like a disturbance of the earth.
Carefully Damiano quieted the dog before he allowed his party to proceed. He suffered a great curiosity to know what was Jan Karl’s business.
“It is the seal of the Holy Father himself,” the blond cleric was saying. “How dare you impede me in my duty, having seen it?”
It was unfortunately the effect of Karl’s Teutonic accent upon the Latin languages that his words came out sounding peremptory at best of times, and when he was excited, quite rude. This effect colored many people’s reactions to the Dutchman. Perhaps it was in some measure responsible for the fact that Damiano, whose nature was generally social, could not bear the man’s company. Surely it was having that effect at this moment upon the pikemen, who had been already strung to a high tension by the near-presence of plague.
The guard beneath the single wall lamp slapped at the parchment Karl was waving about. He shifted his halberd over one shoulder. “You must give to me the authorization you speak of, Father,” he said sullenly, “instead of using it to kill flies this way.”
“Father?” hissed Damiano. “Is he a priest already? How could that be, if he was not one a half-hour ago? And if this fellow has no more interest in Evienne, then what is he doing here—getting recipes for poison from the cardinal?… I fear there is more going on here than I had thought.” And he led Gaspare even closer to the light.
Jan Karl rattled long fingers against the parchment. “What do you want with a page of script, fellow? Could you read it if I gave it to you?” The Dutchman held his breath until the pikeman replied, “No, I cannot read more than a few words. But I know one man’s writing from another. I am well acquainted with the signature of the Holy Father.”
Jan relinquished the parchment. The guard slouching against the far wall spoke then for the first time. “What does it matter whether the signature is the Pope’s, when it is by order of Commander Sforza that no one can approach Cardinal Rocault?”
Jan’s pale eyes widened for a moment like moons. “I know it is Commander Sforza who has this ordered, but it is from the Holy Father the commander’s orders come,” he stated, his langue d’oc slipping in his anxiety.
Saara herself added her small pushes to those of the dog. “She wants us to squeeze through,” whispered Gaspare, as though Damiano was incapable of telling that for himself. The dark witch planted his feet. “Not yet. There are steps in the hall behind us. Can you hear them approaching? Something is going on here I think we ought to understand. Let’s hug the wall and wait.”
The first guard—the one with an eye for penmanship—smiled widely. “I believe you are right, Father. The Holy Father is the master of us all. Yet there is a certain method in this mastery.
“It is like this: God does not tell the crops to grow with an edict and a seal, but rather He tells the rain to fall and the sun to shine and therefore it is done naturally. In a like manner we soldiers offer our service to the church only through Commander Sforza, who being also a soldier governs us as naturally as the rain and the sun. Do you see?
“And the commander has said that the cardinal is not to leave his apartments in the infirmary except under the commander’s eyes, and he has also said that no one at all is to see the cardinal. No one has seen the cardinal, in fact, since he was brought here.”
“I have no orders concerning the Cardinal Rocault,” said Jan Karl hurriedly. “It is only the little Italian girl I need for the information she possesses, naturally. I was told she is being kept somewhere down here.”
“She certainly is,” agreed the guard. “That is if you mean the little redheaded belle. They are together, for lack of space. So you see, Father, it would be difficult for you to see the girl without also seeing the cardinal, and that is exactly what you may not do.” And then the soldier lifted his head as his less sensitive ears also picked up the tread of booted feet. “Perhaps here is the commander himself for you, and your problem can be quickly solved.”
But apparently Jan did not want to talk to Commander Sforza. He shied like a horse and snatched at the parchment still held by the poetically minded guard. The guard, acting by reflex, hid the document behind his back and put one hand to his sword hilt. Seeing this, the Dutchman reconsidered his action and jerked away from sword and swordsman. In consequence he nearly blundered into the invisible Damiano, who made his own little dance to the rear.
Couchicou, the great hound, was not one to ap
preciate complex interactions. Neither was he aware that the group he shepherded through the Papal halls was invisible and so, unassailable. He interpreted the pas de deux as an attack upon one of his favorite people by one he did not particularly like. With a bass bellow he sprang, flattening the unhappy Dutchman and knocking Damiano into Saara and Saara into Gaspare until all fell down like gamepins.
She hit her head on stone, knocking herself dizzy. The endless chant was cut off short, and in that moment the ill-lit corridor became a sudden welter of frightened, struggling, highly visible figures, not the least perturbed of whom were the Pope’s pikemen.
But a terrified cleric being mauled by a dog, and a man-at-arms with the hair straight up on his head are two different frightened beings and they behave differently. Jan Karl curled himself into a ball and rolled, slightly lacerated, between the wall and the nearest pikeman, who was in self-preservation holding the wolfhound off with his halberd. The other guard stared openmouthed at the three people who had erupted out of the floor, and he drew his sword.
At that moment came a booming hello from down the hall and a matching pair of warriors sprinted full tilt from the direction of the infirmary, their studded leather armor slapping against their legs.
Perhaps because the linguistic complexities of the situation were lost on her, Saara was first to take command. She sat sprawled on the flagstones on the infirmary end of the corridor. The dog’s rush had sent both Gaspare and Damiano sprawling forward, past the guard’s station, into the unknown hall. “Run, Dami!” she cried. “Take your Gaspare to his sister. Flee with her. I will follow when I can.”
Damiano got his feet under him. He had other ideas. Stealth was a lost cause, certainly, but he still had resources. With a word he summoned flame to each hand and stepped toward the panicked guardsmen, seeking to draw their attention away from his mistress.
But the task he had set himself was hopeless, for nothing as common as a man aflame could pull the men’s attention away from the phalanx of monstrous bears, white of fur and white of tooth, which stood shoulder to shoulder and nose to rump, filling the hall between the infirmary and themselves. All four soldiers gasped in synchrony, while the air in the corridor grew very, very cold. The single oil lamp on the wall flickered wildly.
Damiano himself stood in amazement, until all the bears opened their mouths together and said quite clearly, “Don’t wait, my dear. Your boy has run ahead. I am in no danger, but Gaspare is.”
It was true. The boy was gone. Damiano’s quick ears could barely hear his light dancer’s steps fading away into the unknown corridor. Cursing Jan Karl and the hound impartially, Damiano followed. Bestial roaring filled the air, along with the “yip, yip, kiyip” of an outmatched dog.
He found the boy picking himself off the flagstone floor, wiping a bloody lip. “Can’t see a damn thing,” whined Gaspare. Damiano gave him five fingers of light, and together they loped on, encountering nothing more except the end of the corridor and a heavily secured wooden door. Behind this door someone was weeping. The witch grimaced at the sound, for he had heard too much weeping lately, and pathos had grown cheap. He shoved open the bar, while the iron locks undid themselves. Damiano smiled thinly, for he took a certain pride from his skill at opening things.
They found themselves in a plush, comfortably equipped chamber that was lit by many wax candles but lacked all sign of a window. There was a table spread for two people’s dinner: meat, cheese, wine and bread, none of which had been touched except the wine. There was an ewer for washing and a pot for pissing, both of which had been touched. There was a divan, topped with a familiar shapeless featherbed, and upon that there was a form wrapped in blankets.
But that form was not Evienne, for she herself sat on a hard chair beside the table, with a brocade about her, and she shook with her sobs.
The place stank.
“Gaspare!” she cried tremulously. “Oh, I’m so glad to see you. Herbert is sick.”
Damiano strode directly to the divan and flipped back the cover. Herbert Cardinal Rocault gazed up at him and whether the feverish eyes recognized in Damiano a lute player he had seen once only in the private chambers of the Pope, there was no telling. After a moment Damiano replaced the blanket more gently than he had pulled it back.
“No one came to take care of him,” Evienne was explaining with difficulty. “They just shoved food under the door. There was only me. So much work.
“And now,” she concluded, with a whistling sigh, “I don’t feel well either. It is so depressing.”
Gaspare held his sister’s hand in a bone-crushing grasp. He looked at Evienne, recognized that she was tired, and saw no more. Partly this was because Gaspare was simple: that is to say, he had no second sight, and partly this was because he was not a very perceptive person where others were concerned. Mostly, of course, it was because he was Evienne’s brother and between them was all the family and all the love either of them had ever known, and he was not able to imagine that his sister might be lost to him.
Damiano was different. He looked down upon Evienne and saw the rosy cheeks of pregnancy mottled with a grayish green, and her smooth throat swollen out of shape. “Oh, dear God,” he whispered to the air.
Gaspare may not have been able to understand by looking but he could not escape the meaning of his friend’s words. His hand slipped to the floor at Evienne’s feet. He shook his head fiercely at Damiano. “No,” he said. “No.”
Once more he touched Evienne’s hand and then turned again to the motionless Damiano. “You. If she’s sick you have to do something!” he cried.
Damiano flinched. “Wh—what? What can I do, Gaspare? Saara and I—we’ve both told you already that there is nothing…”
Evienne stuffed her whitened knuckles in her mouth and bit down upon them. Then she sniffed. “Are you trying to tell me,” she began with a certain rude energy, “that Herbert—that I—have got…” and then this spirit failed her. “Is it the plague?” Her frightened breath wheezed in and out, and then she squeezed her eyes shut. “Oh, no, I don’t feel that bad—just kind of muzzy. And I ache, and it’s so hot in here….” Her words trailed off. “I’m going to die?”
Gaspare screamed, “No! No, no, Evienne, you’re not going to die, no, never!” And in a single motion he flung himself at Damiano and wrapped himself around the witch’s knees, in terrible parody of his actions only a few weeks earlier when he had pleaded with Saara for Damiano. “Don’t let her die,” he cried shrilly. “Please, please, Damiano, don’t let her die!”
It was as though he were praying to God.
With clumsy gestures Damiano freed himself and stepped over to this girl who had been so pretty. His large hands were shaking. “Signorina, I don’t… I don’t have any power over this thing. I’m only a man.” Awkwardly he touched her hair.
Evienne’s eyes were still beautiful, even through fear and disease. Shyly she took hold of Damiano’s shirt and whispered, “I am not ready to die. Please understand. I know I must die but not now, for I am young, and this finds me in the middle of my sin. Who will absolve me, if I die here? Herbert? By Mary and all the saints, he’s not the one to forgive sins he made happen himself, and he’s in no shape to do it anyway. And then… and then I have a baby in me. How can I die now?”
“You see?” seconded Gaspare, as though Evienne’s words had proven something. Then he hit his sister a weak blow upon the thigh. “Slutty bitch. What have you done to us now?”
In the distance the ursine roarings continued, along with the panicked cries of men. Damiano sank down upon the carpet and hid his face behind his hands.
Why did they both believe this impossible thing—that he could cure the plague? Why did it hurt so badly within him that they should believe this? Saara, who knew so much about healing, knew there was no hope.
His course was clear to him. There was no sense in suffering the witnessing of this evil he could not help. Saara had discovered as much a generation ago. It would only
drag down the healthy with it, to madness or suicide. The only recourse was flight.
Within a week he could be in Lombardy, upon the clean high hill where springtime reigned all the seasons, alone among the small high-meadow flowers with an elegant, barefoot mistress. Within a week, between Saara’s magic and his own.
But Damiano did not move. Wonderingly he watched himself not moving. His resolution was formed, but he seemed to lack the power to carry it through.
Was it because Gaspare’s red-fingered grip on his wrist could not be broken? Was it because Evienne was kissing his hand?
“I am not God!” Damiano shouted suddenly. “I… am not even one of his saints!”
“Not a saint, no, but almost,” wheedled Gaspare. “You are such a good sort of person, Damiano. And you have an angel, and that means something. Send for your angel, Damiano, and tell him…” And the boy’s eyes changed as he spoke, from his characteristic hysteria to something unfamiliar to Damiano: something calm and lucid and cold. “And tell him to send Evienne’s plague into me.
“Yes, into me,” Gaspare repeated. “Why not? I’m not anything worth saving. Not even much of a dancer, really. The only thing I do well is to judge other people’s music, and no one will pay me to do that.
“But it’s all the same to the plague, isn’t it? Whether it takes a critic or the cardinal’s mistress? And it must be possible to trade one to the other, too, for Jesus sent a man’s devils into the pigs. Call your angel, Damiano, my good friend. Remind him of that gospel, if he does not remember. Please, Damiano. Do it.”
Damiano called Raphael then, and the angel came.
It may have been only Damiano’s imagination that said the sick chamber did not smell so bad with Raphael standing in it, stainless and glimmering. It was certain, though, that with the first sight of the angel, the witch’s misery became lighter, even though he knew how Raphael would answer his question.
The Damiano Series Page 50
